NYC; Remembering the Lessons of 9/11 By Helping Communities in Need

By CLYDE HABERMAN

Published: July 29, 2008

Jeff Parness describes himself as addicted to the Weather Channel. But he doesn't watch it to see if he should take his umbrella when he leaves his apartment on the Upper West Side. He's looking for disasters. That's how he learned about Groesbeck, Tex.

Groesbeck is a pencil point on the map, about 35 miles east of Waco. In late December 2006, a tornado ripped through the town, killing a man and injuring dozens of people. A mention of the storm on the Weather Channel got Mr. Parness to Google Groesbeck. He came across a news story. One line caught his eye. It said that an assisted-living center for disabled veterans, run by James and Eva Vincent out of their house, had been destroyed.

''I was, like, bingo!'' Mr. Parness said.

He wound up last September leading a few hundred volunteers from across the country, including scores of firefighters and others from New York, to Groesbeck to construct a new home for the Vincents. ''In two days we built a 2,400-square-foot house from the ground up,'' he said.

''They were this classic prideful Texas family,'' he said. ''They'd never ask anybody for help.''

''So why would they accept help from us?'' he said, repeating a question put to him. ''Because we went out of our way to show up.''

Showing up, as we are often told, is the key to life. That, Mr. Parness most definitely does every September.

As for ''we,'' that would be a corps of volunteers that he organizes to help an American town -- usually a place few people ever heard of -- to get back on its feet after trouble has hit. This September it will be Greensburg, Kan. An unusually powerful tornado wiped it out last year, leaving nearly all of its 1,400 people homeless.

Over two days, ''We'll build a 14,000-square-foot barn that will be the main pavilion of a 4-H center and county fairgrounds,'' Mr. Parness said. (For no extra credit, how many of you city types can name all four H's? No fair using Google as a crib sheet.)

It is no coincidence that September is chosen for these projects. We all know what happened on the 11th of that month in 2001. We also know about the thousands who rushed to New York from all over the country to help at ground zero.

Each year on the weekend before Sept. 11, Mr. Parness turns that assistance around. Through New York Says Thank You, a foundation that he created in 2003, he offers a hand to some other place that has been knocked for a loop, typically by nature. You could think of it as payback, but you would be wrong, he says. Paying it forward is more like it.

In addition to a core of New York firefighters and 9/11 rescue workers, he is joined each September, he says, by people from towns helped in previous years.

''They keep showing up, and they keep showing up in greater numbers,'' said Mr. Parness, 42, a former venture capitalist who barely comes up for air as he talks. These days, he devotes himself full time to his foundation, looking for places that could use a boost and raising the money needed to cover travel, lodging, equipment and other expenses.

His volunteers have built houses in Harbison Canyon, Calif., a town east of San Diego that was consumed by wildfires in 2003. They have planted hundreds of trees in tornado-ravaged Utica, Ill., restored homes and a church along the Gulf of Mexico after Hurricane Katrina and rebuilt a church in DeGonia Springs, Ind., after yet another tornado.

He recalled thinking, as they raised the wooden frame of the church, about the barn-raising scene in the film ''Witness.''

''I always wanted to be Amish growing up,'' the Brooklyn-born Mr. Parness said. He was kidding.

One of his regulars is Brian Fitzpatrick, a firefighter assigned to the West 100th Street firehouse of Engine Company 76 and Ladder Company 22. Many of his colleagues know their way around saws and hammers, Firefighter Fitzpatrick said. ''You could put together a pretty good construction company'' with them, he said.

Kendal Lothman, of Greensburg, said his Kansas town could use every bit of that talent. After the tornado, ''there wasn't much left standing,'' said Mr. Lothman, the deputy coordinator for emergency management in Kiowa County. Greensburg is the county seat. Though a recovery is under way, hundreds still live in emergency trailers nearly 15 months later, he said by phone.

''The first impression here was, 'Why would someone from New York want to come and help us?' '' he said. ''But their enthusiasm was phenomenal.''

Mr. Parness, who has visited Greensburg to scope out what it could use, said, ''These are people so self-reliant that it's probably the first time in their lives they've had to depend on help from others.'' But the point, he said, is to ''use the Sept. 11 anniversary to celebrate that sense of humanity, that sense of neighborliness.''

Actually, he said, ''what we do is not about 9/11 -- it's about 9/12.''

PHOTO: New York firefighters and others organized by Jeff Parness put up a church in DeGonia Springs, Ind., in 2006 after a tornado. (PHOTOGRAPH BY SANDRA HAUSER)